Remote Sensing & Geographical Information System in Sudan to determine children'sMalnutrition caused by water & environmental factors.

Abstract

background: sudan has a huge burden of severe acute malnutrition (sam), khartoum state; where this study was conducted is among the top states with increasing number of severely malnourished children in sudan. rapid urbanization in khartoum state has put huge pressure on water supplies. moreover, the incidence of disease is made worse by unclean water & poor hygiene conditions in most poor neighborhoods. furthermore, flooding in khartoum has a major impact on health as pools of stagnant water, coupled with poor sanitation lead to infectious diseases. remote sensing & geographical information system (rs/gis) are applied as instruments.. the main objectives of this study were to investigate applying the gis technique to map the distribution of young children with sam ages 6-59 months in khartoum state in 2016, & to detect the relationship between environmental deficiencies & sam cases.methods: health data we used included records of 1150 cases of children with complicated sam & 5796 children with non-complicated sam & applying a retrospective study based on hospitals and outpatient therapeutic programme (otps). using rs/gis integrated spatial & non-spatial factors.results: showed variation of distribution of children with sam in khartoum state as shown by thematic maps influenced by several factors such as: demographic, maternal, socioeconomic & environmental factors. sam cases are concentrated in administrative units (aus) areas where poverty, limited drinking water resources & poor hand washing practices is more preeminent such as alnaser & asalam aus. furthermore, the results showed variation in distribution of sam cases in khartoum state over months of the year (attributed to meteorological factors & floods).conclusion: both rs & gis technologies have the capability to link & update the information on disease (sam) & monitoring of environmental changes through mapping of cases.